Shropshire Star

Beware of 'alternative facts' over so-called battery calves

I'm cross again, about the irresponsible hype, that gets so much publicity.

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Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer living near Ellesmere

We all know about "battery hens", a system which was banned in the 2010s. I used to visit a shed full of them, on my friend's farm. She was a kind, caring lady, who wouldn't knowingly be cruel to her hens. I bought my eggs from her. Did I think it was cruel? Honestly? Not really, because they looked and sounded OK, laid lots of eggs and she said very few died.

If I didn't like anything, it was that they were replaced every couple of years because they'd passed their laying best, whereas I thought they should have lived longer.

Free range is the system of choice now, but that's not paradise. They're also replaced every two years; they're still prey to weather, foxes and other hens; and get ill and die, for example of bird flu. All systems are compromises to produce food, unless you're a vegan.

Now vegans have started a campaign against "battery calves", which I'd never heard of before. Calves in cages, like battery hens - surely not?

The article in the Farmers Guardian showed a picture of plastic hutches with straw bedding, and individual runs for the calves. We used a similar system, but ours were made of straw and calves were in them for about six weeks until they were weaned and ready to be grouped together.

Our reasons for hutches were that calves can pick up infections from each other; they need to be kept warm, not in big draughty spaces and to have their share of milk, whereas if they were in a mob, greedy calves would depriving timid calves of theirs. It was labour intensive, but important for the calves' health.

The article's picture showed a paddock with lines of calves in their hutches, with their own beds and buckets for feed and water. They could see others but not touch or pass on any infections, and all were facing away from the weather keeping them warm and dry.

Vegans are whipping up a storm among the trusting public to frighten them into giving up meat. They raided that farm and released the calves to make their point. What point? Actually they put the calves' lives at risk by exposing them to all the above things that the farmer was protecting them from.

Beware of what Donald Trump's spokesman called this kind of reporting - 'alternative facts' - to gloss over things Trump was saying to boost his cause.

Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer living near Ellesmere